At a standing room-only gathering of government leaders from Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia as well as senior executives from banks, institutional investors, NGOs and the corporate sectors, Kelvin Tio, Managing Director of Asian Agri shared the palm oil company’s 30-year journey in working with smallholders and substantially raising their standards of living through the partnership.
Tracing Asian Agri’s roots to the 1980s when it was one of the pioneer supporters of the Indonesian government’s transmigration scheme to relocate citizens from the densely populated Java to under-populated islands such as Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and others, Tio explained that the move was in-line with RGE Founder & Chairman Sukanto Tanoto‘s 4Cs principle, i.e. RGE companies must operate in a way that is Good for the Community, Good for the Country, Good for the Climate, and only then will it be Good for the Company.
Over the past three decades, Asian Agri grew its team on the ground to support its smallholder farmers to 200 strong. These Asian Agri employees work directly with smallholders–offering them the best seedlings, training them in sustainable planting methods, purchasing their yield at fair prices, and more–to achieve the best outcome in the partnership.
